Bonnies vs. SUNY-Amherst (Tue. 12/22/20 at 4:00 pm)

Oakland and Ohio now have had openings due to other teams pausing. Ohio isn’t too far and I don’t think they’re scheduled to play again until 2021. Too bad we called off our rigorous search after 6 hours - minus lunch break of course.
 
Not to belabor the scheduling points, but UB gets SU and WVU this season. I'm starting to think "they won't play us" is a cop-out. We have Pitt, PSU, WVU, and SU all within 4 hours. I know P5 matchups don't fall outta trees but come on.

There was a detailed article a few years back about staff at the U. being on the phone to practically every P5 and turned down by almost 100% of them. Was that a CYA piece? Are we tournament caliber? So fucking car pool to Binghamton and play them in their swimming pool annex pretending to be a basketball arena. Beat the snot out of them. For free. They played Marist in a back to back H/H. Think those staffs were picky? No. They just got games. Granted I have zero inside information but from the outside it looks like we're the problem. Too picky? Who knows thats all speculation but there has been enough creativity out there to seriously question wtf actually transpired on phone calls out of 1 RC Drive.
 
But we’re little ol’ Bona’s! We’re not worthy! Just ask some in our own athletics department when it’s off the record. You’ll hear all of the reasons we can’t do certain things, but the focus is rarely on what we can do.
This is so right and has always infuriated me. I can understand throwing it out as a crutch when things aren’t going great, but what in gods name is the point of belittling your own program?

Especially because it’s so wrong! How many other (wank motion) mid majors have the advantages Bona has? We have a long storied history, a final four, a dozen and a half NBAers, including a HOFer and a current player. We have a legitimately passionate and involved fanbase; alumni totals be damned - more people in raw numbers deeply care about Bona hoops than most programs across the country. We play in the second best basketball only conference in the country and have been one of the best teams consistently over the past decade. We have prominent alums in the basketball/sports media who aren’t shy about promoting the program. Starting in 2013 we’ve gotten NCAA unit revenue for 12 years straight and currently are earning two in a league that disproportionately allocates to the earner.

Yet there’s always this woe is me attitude (and Schmidt - god bless him - has not been immune to this) because we have low enrollment in a “remote” location?

Buffalo is a 90 minute drive away and the few SUNY-Amherst fans in existence literally think they can become the next Gonzaga. I know they have 320,000 commuters in any given calendar year and those aforementioned fans are some of the most ignorant johnny-come-lately mouth breathers on the planet, but at least they don’t self sabatoge.

There are only a handful of non P5/BE programs that are in a better position to succeed than St. Bonaventure. Time to start acting like it.
 
I’m torn on this. Obviously this year is a disaster, but I really don’t think our schedules are that bad most years, it’s just that we ALWAYS drop a couple games against Q3/Q4 before conference play. Might be time to do away with our little three road games even though it’ll cost the program some $$$.

Our 19-20 schedule was pretty bad, but 18-19 could have had Creighton, Clemson, Syracuse, Buffalo, and UVM. 17-18 was better than that.

Like BI85 said, it seems unlikely that we can’t get two P5 on the schedule annually. I’m not saying we need to play Duke, but a game with VA Tech, Memphis, Penn State can’t happen? How about a top MVC team? They normally rank well, but we never schedule them.

If Schmidt’s playbook is truly as thick as a bible, maybe he does not have faith in rosters that routinely have a large number of new players each year...Probably the same reason why we never play a deep bench.
 
Another SBU "lifer" making excuses on Twitter. They gave up looking for an opponent after about four hours.

 
I must have pissed off the basketball Twitter account. I replied to a rhody fan and said our school dididnt make scheduling a priority and they replied but deleted it before I could see it. Wish they would have kept it, I'd love to have a conversation about it.
 
I must have pissed off the basketball Twitter account. I replied to a rhody fan and said our school dididnt make scheduling a priority and they replied but deleted it before I could see it. Wish they would have kept it, I'd love to have a conversation about it.
It is a very fair conversation to have, and the athletics department should answer those questions. Compared to other fan bases that give a shit, the majority of Bona alums/fans are pretty damn understanding, patient, and cognizant of the D1 landscape. We know this is a difficult time for everyone, yet here we are on the wrong side of the scheduling coin... again. Something tells me the answers you’d receive would involve, “Durrr... teams won’t come to Olean... durrrr... all 350+ teams said no... durrrr!” It just feels like other peer programs are far more prepared with contingency plans. This smells of a lack of long term planning and organization.
 
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